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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25257982">sand in your bloody grin</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies'>friedgalaxies</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Grief/Mourning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:21:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,434</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25257982</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>His father is dead. <br/>	Suna failed and his father is dead. <br/>	Orochimaru was impersonating his father and their invasion of Konoha with the alliance of the Village of Sound failed and his father is dead. <br/>	His mouth tastes like blood and sand.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gaara &amp; Kankurou &amp; Temari</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>sand in your bloody grin</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His father is dead.</p>
<p>Suna failed and his father is dead.</p>
<p>Orochimaru was impersonating his father and their invasion of Konoha with the alliance of the Village of Sound failed and his father is dead.</p>
<p>His mouth tastes like blood and sand.</p>
<p>Gaara is twelve. The chuunin exams have just concluded-- of sorts? Is it really a conclusion when a fraction of your contestants either threw their matches and forfeited the win to a Konoha genin or became so overcome with rage from the demon inside them that it manifested as an unquenchable bloodlust?-- and Gaara is twelve and Orochimaru fooled them all and his father is dead.</p>
<p>His father’s body is limp and pale where it lays at the bottom of a canyon, blood spattered in a wide arc around the shape of him and his retainers, like the wings of a fallen angel dissolving into so much blood and mercury. His white robes are stained red with blood and orange with desert dust and Gaara’s mouth tastes like blood and sand.</p>
<p>The smell of iron is strong in his nose and his mouth tastes like copper. Baki is standing with the rest of the Suna shinobi a few feet away, heading the pack with hands at the ready like he’s going to push Gaara to join his father’s broken, bloody body at the bottom of the canyon should his bloodlust switch on and Shukaku come crawling out of hiding where he licks his wounds in the back of Gaara’s head.</p>
<p>Gaara is twelve and he’s the Kazekage now. He’s twelve and his father is dead and Orochimaru fooled them all and Gaara is Kazekage now.</p>
<p>He supposed he should’ve been aware something was up when his “father” showed up to watch the exams with the lower half of his face veiled in a blatant ripoff of the white sheet his siblings’ mentor keeps over the left half of his face, hiding something the rest of them aren’t privy to. His father has-- had-- always been a vain man, not one to shy away from public appearances or plastering his stony face all across the sandstone walls of the buildings in Suna in the form of posters proclaiming his greatness, liquid eyes staring deep into the souls of their citizens and daring them to slip up under his arbitrary laws. His father had always been a vain man, and had never shied away from keeping his guarded expressions exposed, leaving his children guessing for when the sword would next fall on their necks and if it would be hard enough to decapitate them this time. Gaara felt like his own head was barely hanging on by a thread, his spinal cord stretched to the limit like the threadbare hem of a mother’s skirts that her child tugged on with relentless demand, like the hems of the sleeves Temari worried between her thin fingers all calloused in odd places from wielding her fan when she was nervous and thought no one could see her.</p>
<p>Gaara supposed they should have picked up on it before, because his father had always been a vain man, but the need for blood on his hands and sand in his teeth had been singing so bright and clear underneath Gaara’s skin that he could barely hear the words thrown in his direction with all the sharp edges of kunai meant to pierce the sand carapace he kept wrapped around himself like a child’s security blanket.</p>
<p>Gaara was twelve, and he had not been a child in many years.</p>
<p>The mangled bodies at the bottom of the cavern were almost intoxicating to stare at. The blood had dried in great rusty curves around them and Gaara could only wonder who Orochimaru was, exactly, to get through his father’s Magnet Release, the technique passed down through their bloodline for generations and what assured that Gaara was going to be the Kazekage once this was all over.</p>
<p>Surprisingly enough, Konoha had given them up without much of a fight. He supposed they were scrambling as much as his own home village was soon to be, with their Hokage murdered in a bloody testament to the loyalty he held for his people and his village, left facedown and stained with the weight of all his years across his heavy, wrinkled brow on a shingled green roof dripping with flora and red, red blood.</p>
<p>Kankuro had long since abandoned Gaara in his staring, standing at the edge of the cliffside so close the toes of his sandals sent orange rock crumbling away and skittering down the cliff face into the crevasse below, saying something about Gaara’s creepy, unblinking stare and how they were wasting daylight. Temari still stood next to him, full lips pressed into a thin line and distress written plain as day on her broad face. She had picked up barely a scratch from the exams and the following invasion, but she looked tired. She looked as tired as Gaara felt, as tired as the kohl-dark tanuki rings around his eyes must make him seem.</p>
<p>Gaara had read, before, had heard from people in his village when they passed him with whispered conversations behind their hands, before people weren’t too scared to come within the broad side of a mile of his child form, that you were supposed to grieve for your dead. Gaara supposed this was his grief, looking down at the broken, scattered form of his father and two retainers like so much desert scrub brush strewn across the bottom of the canyon.</p>
<p>He supposed this was his grief, the weight of Shukaku heavy in his bones and the anger he had never been able to suppress for long thrumming underneath his skin, behind his eyes, it the dark cavern of his chest where he was pretty sure a heart was supposed to be. He supposed this was his grief, for the child he had never been and never would be, for the mother he had killed and had never known, for the siblings he had wronged, for the uncle he had sent to death with the curse of his own existence, for the years spent under the thumb of a father who viewed him as a tool, as a weapon, as an instrument of destruction. Gaara supposed he was grieving for himself as much as he was grieving for his father, and that that was fine, because no one had stopped him yet. He supposed everyone was still too scared of him to stop him if it wasn’t.</p>
<p>Gaara supposed that grief was the bitter taste of blood and sand and tears, tears of loss and defeat and emotions he would never know. He supposed grief was the warm tracks cutting through the dust on his face, wetting his sand armor that he kept wrapped around him constantly, now, ever since it was broken. The cut on his forehead stung and the wound on his shoulder ached and the bump on his head throbbed. He supposed this was grief, for the monster he had been and would always continue to be.</p>
<p>The rattling of the sand in his gourd and the crunch of desert underfoot was all the warning he got before Baki’s hand alighted on his shoulder, grains of sand curling around the man’s thin, dark fingers like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to break them or keep them there forever. Baki’s touch was warm, even through the sand and the many layers of Gaara’s thin clothing, his hand broad enough that it encompassed all of Gaara’s thin shoulder underneath one palm. Gaara was twelve and someone was touching him without the intent to hurt for what was likely the first time in his life.</p>
<p>Shukaku rattled his bloodlust. Gaara ignored him for what was likely the first time in a long series of times, and turned his unblinking stare on the man who called himself his mentor.</p>
<p>“He was a good man.” Baki said, and he sounded something approaching sincere.</p>
<p>“No, he was not.” Gaara returned. The words felt hollow in his mouth even though they were true, and he didn’t know how to express the sentiment that his father had never been a good man and would never be a good man even if he was remembered fondly by the minds of the people of Suna. Baki sighed, patting Gaara’s shoulder lightly. The wind tousled at the curtain obscuring the left side of his face, and Gaara caught a glimpse of a scar running bone deep down the man’s covered cheek, in a way he could’ve sworn was mimicked by the red whiskers of paint on the other side.</p>
<p>“No, he wasn’t.” Baki agreed. Temari startled, as though this was news to her, though Gaara was pretty sure she had been living with their father even longer than he had, not even taking their two years difference in age into account. While Gaara had spent every year up until age six with his uncle, under Yashamaru’s loving care in the high-tiered sandstone house they called home, with the man his caretaker up until the very moment he had loosed a bag of explosive tags and nearly killed Gaara along with himself, Temari and Kankuro had always lived in the Kazekage’s mansion. If Gaara had his say about it, they would continue to do so, even when he was inevitably named Kazekage. They had a lot of years of catching up to do, which seemed like something normal, healthy people did with their siblings and the people they loved.</p>
<p>Love. That was such a foreign concept to him still, even though he was sure Naruto had knocked the definition of the word into his head with the force of that final headbutt.</p>
<p>He lifted a hand, pale and small and unscarred, to touch the one scar that lived on his body, up and to the left on his forehead, just barely hidden when his scruffy red hair clung wet to his head with the water of a bath. Temari tensed for a moment, hand moving instinctively to her fan, and Gaara could see the rest of the shinobi move to do the same with their own weapons out of the corner of his tired eyes. He would’ve thought they’d be done with that now, since they knew he didn’t have to telegraph his moves so blatantly to conduct his sand, but whatever made them feel most comfortable.</p>
<p>Comfort. That was a foreign concept, too. Something Gaara was sure he would come to confront, eventually, when he learned exactly what a comfort zone was. He had a feeling he’d be stepping rather far out of his for the foreseeable future, once he learned what it was.</p>
<p>Temari relaxed when his hand only went so far as the scar that had been in a club of one for so long, etched perfectly and bone-deep into his skin, recently joined by a burn in the shape of a hand and a thin, smooth line across the right of his brow. Gaara thought those would be nice keepsakes, if he could convince Shukaku to keep from healing them. It would be the first of many battles with the vengeful tanuki, but it would be worth it. Yashamaru had always had so many little keepsakes around their borrowed home, little things Gaara was forbidden from touching lest he hurt himself, even if the sand infused with the spirit of a mother he had never known would always come out to protect him at the last moment.</p>
<p><em>You were too slow, this time,</em> he thought, and the very words made him feel giddy. Too slow. What a concept.</p>
<p>“You alright, Gaara?” Temari asked, a brusque kind of trepidation in her voice. She sounded shaken by the corpses, even if she had been staring at them as long as Gaara had, unflinchingly determined in the face of death. Gaara nodded, once, simply.</p>
<p>“Just thinking.”</p>
<p>“What about?” Temari hazarded, already turning on her heel back towards the group with the intention of him following. He did, keeping a generous arms length between the two of them, so as not to make her uncomfortable. He was going to be taking a lot of precautions like that, Gaara thought. What a funny habit.</p>
<p>“Scars.”</p>
<p>“That was your first one, wasn’t it?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer. Temari had always been much better at polite conversation than he or Kankuro, as much as it bored her.</p>
<p>“Yes. Now I have two more in my collection.” Gaara said, even if the words felt a little silly coming out of his mouth.</p>
<p>“Collection?” Kankuro muttered out of the side of his mouth, wide and dark and purple with the paint he so painstakingly applied every morning. He said it was the mark of a puppeteer, of a puppeteer’s pride and dedication to their craft and attention to detail. Gaara just thought it was the only reason Kankuro could find to wear makeup, but if it made him feel better, than so be it.</p>
<p>“Yes. I am making a collection of scars. They are very memorable, and I like that.” Gaara returned. He shifted his unblinking stare to the horizon. The sun was going to set soon, and night was the best time to travel in the desert.</p>
<p>He heard the sounds of a handful of Shinobi splitting off to retrieve the bodies of the murdered Kazekage and his retainers from the bottom of the canyon. He ignored them.</p>
<p>Gaara was twelve, and he was a monster, and he was going to be the Kazekage soon.</p>
<p>“Just don’t make a habit of getting beat up, alright?” Temari said, and Gaara had to turn his face to hers to be sure it was a joke. From the way the corner of her mouth turned, the way her deep-dark-sky eyes crinkled at the corners-- all classic signs of mirth, from what he could tell-- she was making a joke at his expense. Gaara did his best to smile in return, though it wasn’t very wide or very good. Temari beamed.</p>
<p>Something warm stirred in the depths of Gaara’s chest, and for once, it wasn’t his demon.</p>
<p>His father is dead. They are wrapping his body in cloth, acting in place of the proper burial shrouds he’ll be wrapped and burnt in once they get back to Suna and have a proper funeral. His father is dead and Gaara is twelve and he is a monster and he is going to be the Kazekage soon, and he is smiling.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you so much for reading! as always comments, concrit, and questions are always appreciated!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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